Leaked Video Screenshot Traced to Employee
A recent story from 404 Media reports that an employee for Google was responsible for using their admin privileges to access private videos on the official Nintendo Youtube account to leak information related to Yoshi’s Crafted World back in 2017.
404 Media reports that they were able to receive data from an anonymous tipster at Google, documenting reported privacy and security issues that had occurred internally from employees for the company between the years of 2013-2018. In the original leaked image from Nintendo’s Youtube account that was shared on Reddit in 2017, the user responsible for posting the leak had stated that they received the image from a friend who worked at Google. While the leaked screenshot only confirmed a Yoshi game was in the works with a few small gameplay screenshots, most notably, the URL at the top of the webpage is for admin.youtube.com.
While it’s unclear if the original employee intended to leak the information to the wider Internet, the incident appeared to have quickly been noted and reported to Google for handling internally.
Other Company Leaks
As this report only covers a time period of 2013-2018, it’s unclear if other Nintendo leaks and information online in more recent years could have been obtained through a similar method from employees of Google or other companies. According to Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming however, in a recent Tweet, it has been rumored that Youtube has recently investigated employees for contractual agreement breaches due to accessing certain backend content.
For now, it remains unknown if Nintendo or any other companies may be planning further action with the release of this information.
